YA Historic Fiction - Coming-of-Age-Cultural Identity-Latinx- Indigenous

Alicia Ortega, a 14-year-old Mexican girl, struggles to protect her father's land when she and her sisters are aggressively courted by land-hungry Yankees and rough-cut fur traders in the Spanish colony. Dangers on all sides begin to descend as the sisters are pursued by immigrant merchants and sailors hoping to cash in on rich lands and access to Pacific ports.

Alicia's indigenous companion, Nina, is there to help. But the Chumash girl is valuable to traders, trappers, and surveyors for her knowledge of the California terrain and her network of tribal relations. The Franciscan Mission is pressuring her family to convert to Catholicism, a charming trader is courting her, and, worst of all, their tribal territory and tribal ways are vanishing.

2021 San Francisco Writers Conference Young Adult Writing Contest Winner

2021 International Latino Book Awards - Honorable Mention